Bad Day for the Befuddled Left

Zombietime has posted video and transcripts of Christopher Hitchens’ recent debate with the leftwing jihad apologist and author of American Fascists, Chris Hedges. I urge you to watch the brief “Hitchens Highlights” clip below. A second compilation can be found here and a much longer exchange, in 7 parts, can be seen here with photos, transcripts and commentary. Needless to say, Hitchens does a fine job of highlighting the sneery, morally contorted posturing that now defines much of the left.

“The decline - not to say the moral eclipse - of the secular left has just been illustrated on this very platform by someone who makes excuses for suicide murder and tries to trace them to a second-rate sociology... Every member of the 82nd Airborne Division could be a snake-handling congregationalist, for all I know. But these men and women, though you sneer and jeer at them, and snigger when you hear applause and excuses for suicide bombers - and you have to live with the shame of having done that - these people are guarding you while you sleep, whether you know it or not. And they're also creating space for secularism to emerge, and you better hope that they are successful.”

Someone buy that man a drink. More sneery posturing here. Related: this.

Comments

[Francis Sedgemore]

Someone buy that man a drink.

What, and incur the wrath of Her Majesty's Government?

[David]

Francis,

If you watch the whole thing it’s quite funny when Hitchens fumbles for a cigarette to audible consternation from the audience. You have to raise an eyebrow at people who'll applaud suicide bomber apologists, but gasp at the prospect of someone smoking in a public building.

[SDN]

People like Hedges are an old story. 1870-1880 or so.

"Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll."

-----

"You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Tommy sees!"

Kipling, "Tommy"

[David]

SDN,

Quite. Sneering wholesale at the armed forces while exonerating real evil is one of the left’s less becoming traits. (There are, I should add, some honourable exceptions, but not enough.) The first link underneath the Hitchens quote illustrates how far that perversity can go. It belongs in the same category of moral idiocy as the belief that everything would be fine if only we didn’t have armies, or that a free and functional society will, somehow, miraculously, never need defending. It’s bubblegum politics, for children and fantasists.